I’m a sucker for martial arts flicks from the 80s, whether it be from Japan or Hong Kong, or from the US. Even if it’s rubbish, I’ll probably still enjoy it, because bad 80s movies are entertaining by default. Vision Quest is hardly earth-shattering, but it’s not a stinking pile of gloop either. In fact, it did a very good job of entertaining Wifey and I for a couple of hours. This is because Wifey is suitably tragic as well. That’s yet another sign of our collective awesomeness.

Moving along – Vision Quest’s a bit of an unusual pick as it revolves around wrestling competitions from the perspective of a US high school, rather than my usual martial arts pics featuring one-man armies with optional mullets. While the film began with a bit of a false start, it didn’t take long to win me over. First of all, it’s a teen movie with 80s grit. Love it. It also features Jake Ryan (well, Michael Schoeffling, but he’ll always by Jake Ryan to anyone whose a fan of 80s John Hughes gold), so there’s more thumbs up, particularly if you’re like Wifey and still harbour a secret passion for Jake Ryan… bugger knows why she married a ranga with one leg considering it’s a bit of an antithesis to 80s Schoeffling, though I’m certainly not complaining 😉

Then there’s the Madonna factor. Not only do we get to see her do her quality 80’s dancing, but we get “Crazy For You” played throughout the movie during montages, in a club, as an instrumental during terrible romantic moments, et cetera.

In fact, let’s give this one another thumbs up for cramming in plenty of montages – if there’s anything Trey Parker has taught us using the power of animation or marionettes, it’s that everything works better as a montage.

But going back to Madonna, I think we need to take a moment to consider the soundtrack. As noted, not only is there some 80s Madonna in there (I’ll admit to enjoying 80s Madonna sugarpop), you get a menagerie of awesomeness in the form of Don Henley, Style Council, Foreigner and (wait for it), Journey. Epic.

But what about the actual movie? Wasn’t too bad actually – I don’t know a lot about wrestling, but it was interesting to see some of the groundwork in there. The Wikipedia entry tell me it’s a bit of a cult classic among middle and high school wrestlers, so I’m guessing there’s something in there.

But for me, it was the cast, the music and the setting that won me over. This of course is completely obvious in this blocky trailer on YouTube:

Comments Off on This week is now (un)officially the Noriyuki “Pat” Morita/Mr Miyagi appreciation week

This week on Gisoku Budo, inspired by the previous couple of posts, I will be focusing on nothing else but the awesomeness of Noriyuki “Pat” Morita and Mr Miyagi.

I was actually intending on writing this post yesterday, so luckily enough there will be two posts on his awesomeness made today to make up for that 🙂

For this one, I’d like to chuck across a link to a reproduction of an article written by Charles C. Goodin titled “Noriyuki Pat Morita: In the Footsteps of a Sensei” (source: issue #6, Spring 1996 of Furyu: The Budo Journal). The transcript has appeared on The Karate Kid Movie WebSite, and you can find it under “Cast” in the Karate Kid I Menu on the left-hand side – because he’s using frames and some java, I can’t link to the page directly. Head down about a third of the page and there’s a big block of orange text – it’s all in there, and there are some amazing insights into the movie, Morita and the character of Mr Miyagi as well.

So Wifey and I are currently watching season 3 of Happy Days as she’s keen to get me to appreciate the series since she’s a fan. Being the very clever girl she is, she’s picked the series that introduces Arnold, aka Noriyuki “Pat” Morita, aka Mr Miyagi.

To say I had a crazy head spin and my brain had trouble dealing with the extreme awesomeness of the prospect of Mr Miyagi being a regular character on classic sitcom would be an understatement.

Or in short – Wifey is a very, very clever person 😀

Anywho, we were watching a random episode the other night, and Richie the crazy ‘ranga attends a martial arts class at Arnold’s (apparently it was ju jutsu, then became judo part way through the episode – go fig 😉 ) to learn martial arts, and bam, Noriyuki comes out and throws Richie over his shoulder. It was awesome. Never thought I’d see Mr Miyagi on Happy Days teaching some teens martial arts in a sitcom set in the 50s.

About me

Gisoku Budo is a martial arts blog with a twist - having lost my left leg above the knee as a child and growing up as an amputee, I've always challenged myself, and so this blog is a record of my martial arts journey.